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Root IzliAu 



J-jBRARY OF CONGRESS 

021 051 386 3 



SPEECH BY ELIHU ROOT, AS TEMPORARY 
CHAIRMAN OF THE NATIONAL REPUBLICAN 
CONVENTION, AT CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, 
JUNE 2J, J904. > j* «* * * * 



NEW YORK : 
C. G. Bcrgoynk. Walker and Centre Sts. 
1904. 



SPEECH BY EEIHU ROOT, AS TEMPORARY 
w 

CHAIRMAN OF THE NATIONAL REPUBLICAN 
CONVENTION, AT CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, 
JUNE 21, 1904. J. jk j. & j, j. 



NEW YORK : 
C. G. Burgoyne, Walker and Centre Sts. 
1904. 






NOV 8 190V 



The responsibility of government rests upon the Re- 
publican Party. The complicated machinery through 
which the 80,000,000 people of the United States gov- 
ern themselves, answers to no single will. The compo- 
site government devised by the framers of the Consti- 
tution to meet the conditions of national life more than 
a century ago, requires the willing cooperation of many 
minds, the combination of many independent factors, 
in every forward step for the general welfare. 

The President at Washington with his Cabinet, the 
90 Senators representing 45 sovereign States, the 386 
Representatives in Congress, — are required to reach 
concurrent action upon a multitude of questions in- 
volving varied and conflicting interests and requiring 
investigation, information, discussion and reconcilia- 
tion of views. From all our vast territory with its 
varieties of climate and industry, from all our great 
population active in production and commerce and 
social progress and intellectual and moral life to a de- 
gree never before attained by any people, — difficult 
problems press upon the National Government. 

Within the past five years more than sixty-six thou- 
sand bills have been introduced in Congress. Some 
method of selection must be followed. There must be 
some preliminary process to ascertain the general 
tenor of public judgment upon the principles to 
be applied in government, and some organization 
and recognition of leadership which shall bring a legis- 
lative majority and the executive into accord in 
the practical application of those principles ; or effect- 
ive government becomes impossible. 



The practical governing instinct of our people has 
adapted the machinery devised in the 18th to the con- 
ditions of the 20th Century by the organization of 
national political parties. In them men join for the 
promotion of a few cardinal principles upon which 
they agree. For the sake of those principles they lay 
aside their differences upon less important questions. 
To represent those principles and to carry on the gov- 
ernment in accordance with them, they present to the 
people candidates whose competency and loyalty they 
approve. The people by their choice of candidates 
indicate the principles and methods which they wish 
followed in the conduct of their government. They 
do not merely choose between men ; they choose be- 
tween parties — between the principles they profess, 
the methods they follow, the trustworthiness of their 
professions, the inferences to be drawn from the records 
of their past, the general weight of character of the 
body of men who will be brought into participation in 
government by their ascendency. 

When the course of the next administration is but 
half done the Republican Party will have completed 
the first half century of its national life. Of the 
eleven administrations since the first election of 
Abraham Lincoln, nine — covering a period of thirty- 
six years — have been under Republican presidents. 
For the greater part of that time, the majority in each 
House of Congress has been Republican. History 
affords no parallel in any age or country for the 
growth in national greatness and power and honor, the 
wide diffusion of the comforts of life, the uplifting of 
the great mass of the people above the hard con- 
ditions of poverty, the common opportunity for edu- 
cation and individual advancement, the universal 
possession of civil and religious liberty, the protection 



of property and security for the rewards of industry 
and enterprise, the cultivation of national morality, 
respect for religion, sympathy with humanity and love 
of liberty and justice, which have marked the life of 
the American people during this long period of Re- 
publican control. 

With the platform and the candidates of this Con- 
vention, we are about to ask a renewed expression of 
popular confidence in the Republican Party. 

We shall ask it because the principles to which we 
declare our adherence are right, aud the best interests 
of our country require that they should be followed in 
its government. 

We shall ask it because the unbroken record of the 
Republican Party in the past is an assurance of the 
sincerity of our declarations and the fidelity with 
which we shall give them effect. Because we have 
been constant in principle, loyal to our beliefs and 
faithful to our promises, we are entitled to be believed 
and trusted now. 

We shall ask it because the character of the Party 
gives assurance of good government. A great poli- 
tical organization, competent to govern, is not a chance 
collection of individuals brought together for the 
moment as the shifting sands are piled up by wind and 
sea, to be swept away, to be formed and re-formed 
again. It is a growth. Traditions and sentiments 
reaching down through struggles of years gone, and 
the stress and heat of old conflicts, and the influence 
of leaders passed away, and the ingrained habit of 
applying fixed rules of interpretation and of thought, — 
all give to a political party known and inalienable 
qualities from which must follow in its deliberate judg- 
ment and ultimate action, like results for good or bad 
government. We do not deny that other parties have 



iii their membership men of morality aud patriotism ; 
but we assert with confidence that above all others, 
by the influences which gave it birth and have main- 
tained its life, by the causes for which it has striven, 
the ideals which it has followed, the ^Republican 
Party as a party has acquired a character which 
makes its ascendancy the best guarantee 
of a government loyal to principle and effective 
in execution. Through it more than any other 
political organization the moral sentiment of America 
finds expression. It cannot depart from the direction 
of its tendencies. From what it has been may be 
known certainly what it must be. Not all of us rise to 
its standard ; not all of us are worthy of its glorious 
history ; but as a whole this great political organiz- 
ation — the party of Lincoln and McKinley — cannot 
fail to work in the spirit of its past and in loyalty to 
great ideals. 

We shall ask the continued confidence of the people 
because the candidates whom we present are of proved 
competency and patriotism, fitted to fill the offices for 
which they are nominated, to the credit and honor of 
our Country. 

We shall ask it because the present policies of our 
government are beneficial and ought not to be set 
aside ; and the people's business is being well done, 
and ought not to be interfered with. 

Have not the American people reason for satisfac- 
tion and pride in the conduct of their government 
since the election of 1900, when they rendered their 
judgment of approval upon the first administration of 
President McKinley ? Have we not had an honest 
government? Have not the men selected for office 
been men of good reputation who by their past lives 
bad given evidence that they were honest and compe- 



tent ? Can any private business be pointed out in 
which lapses from honesty have been so few and so 
trifling proportionately, as in the public service of the 
United States ? And when they have occurred, have 
not the offenders been relentlessly prosecuted and 
sternly punished without regard to political or personal 
relations ? 

Have we not had an effective government ? Have 
not the laws been enforced ? Has not the slow process 
of legislative discussion upon many serious questions 
been brought to practical conclusions embodied in 
beneficial statutes ? and has not the Executive pro- 
ceeded without vacillation or weakness to give these 
effect ? Are not the laws of the United States obeyed 
at home ? and does not our government command re- 
spect and honor throughout the world ? 

Have we not had a safe and conservative govern- 
ment? Has not property been protected? Are not 
the fruits of enterprise and industry secure? What 
safeguard of the constitution for vested right or in- 
dividual freedom has not been scrupulously observed ? 
When has any American administration ever dealt 
more considerately and wisely with questions which 
might have been the cause of conflict with foreign 
powers? When have more just settlements been 
reached by peaceful means ? When has any adminis- 
tration wielded a more powerful influence for peace ? 
and when have we rested more secure in friendship 
with all mankind ? 

Four years ago the business of the Country was 
loaded with burdensome internal taxes, imposed during 
the war with Spain. By the Acts of March 2nd, 1901, 
and April 12th, 1902, the Country has been wholly re- 
lieved of that annual burden of over one hundred 



6 

million dollars ; and the further accumulation of a sur- 
plus which was constantly withdrawing the money of 
the Country from circulation has been prevented by 
the reduction of taxation. 

Between the 30th of June, 1900, and the first of 
June, 1904, our Treasury Department collected in rev- 
enues the enormous sum of $2,203,000,000 and ex- 
pended $2,028,000,000, leaving us with a surplus of 
over $170,000,000 after paying the $50,000,000 for the 
Panama Canal and loaning $4,600,000 to the St. Louis 
Exposition. Excluding those two extraordinary pay- 
ments, which are investments from past surplus and 
not expenditures of current income, the surplus for this 
year will be the reasonable amount of about $12,000,- 
000. 

The vast and complicated transactions of the Treas- 
ury, which for the last fiscal year show actual cash re- 
ceipts of $4,250,290,262 and disbursements of $4,113,- 
199,414, have been conducted with perfect accuracy and 
fidelity and without the loss of a dollar. Under wise 
management the Financial Act of March 14th, 1900, 
which embodied the sound financial principles of the 
Republican Party and provided for the maintenance of 
our currency on the stable basis of the gold standard, 
has wrought out beneficient results. On the 1st of No- 
vember, 1899, the interest-bearing debt of the United 
States was $1,046,049,020. On the 1st of May last the 
amount of that debt was $895,157,440, a reduction of 
$150,891,580. By refunding, the annual interest has 
been still more rapidly reduced from $40,347,884 on the 
1st of November, 1899, to $24,176,745 on the 1st 
of June, 1904, an annual saving of over 
$16,000,000. When the Financial Act was passed 
the thinly settled portions of our Country were suffer- 
ing for lack of banking facilities because the banks 



were in the large towns, and none could be organized 
with a capital of less than $50,000. Under the pro- 
visions of that Act, there were organized down to the 
1st of May last 1296 small banks of $25,000 capital, 
furn' siring, nnder all the safeguards of the National 
Banking System, facilities to the small communities of 
the West and South. The facilities made possible 
by that Act have increased the circulation of national 
banks from $254,402,730 on the 14th of March, 1900, 
to $445,988,565 on the 1st of June, 1904. The money 
of the Country in circulation has not only increased in 
amount with our growth in business, but it has steadily 
gained in the stability of the basis on which it rests. 
On the 1st of March, 1897, when the first administra- 
tion of McKinley began, we had in the Country in- 
cluding bullion in the Treasury, $1,806,272,076. This 
was $23.14 per capita for our population, and of this 
38.893 per cent was gold. On the 1st of March, 1901, 
when the second administration of McKinley began, 
the money in the Country was $2,467,295,228. This 
was $28.34 per capita, and of this 45.273 per cent was 
gold. On the 1st of May last the money in the Country 
was $2,814,985,446, which was $31.02 per capita, and of 
it 48.028 per cent was gold. This great increase of cur- 
rency has been arranged in such a way that the large 
government notes in circulation are gold certificates, 
while the silver certificates and greenbacks are 
of small denominations. As the large gold cer- 
tificates represent gold actually on deposit, their 
presentation at the Treasury in exchange for gold can 
never infringe upon the gold reserve. As the small 
silver certificates and greenbacks are always in active 
circulation, no large amount of them can be accumu- 
lated for the purpose of drawing on the gold reserve ; 
and thus, while every man can get a gold dollar for 



8 

every dollar of the government's currency, the endless 
chain which we were once taught to fear so much, has 
been effectively put out of business. The Secretary of 
the Treasury has shown himself mindful of the needs 
of business and has so managed our finances as himself 
to expand and contract our currency as occasion has 
required. When in the fall of 1902 the demand for 
funds to move the crops caused extraordinary money 
stringency, the Secretary exercised his lawful right to 
accept state and municipal bonds as security for pub- 
lic deposits, thus liberating United States bonds which 
were used for additional circulation. When the crops 
were moved and the stringency was over he called for 
a withdrawal of the state and municipal securities, and 
thus contracted the currency. Again, in 1903, under 
similar conditions, he produced similar results. The 
payment of the $50,000,000 for the Panama Canal 
made last month without causing the slightest disturb- 
ance in finance, showed good judgment and a careful 
consideration of the interests of business upon which 
our people may confidently rely. 

Four years ago the regulation by law of the great 
corporate combinations called " trusts " stood sub- 
stantially where it was when the Sherman Anti-Trust 
Act of 1890 was passed. President Cleveland, in his 
last message of December, 1896, had said : 

" Though Congress has attempted to deal with this mat- 
ter by legislation, the laws passed for that purpose thus far 
have proved ineffective, not because of any lack of disposi- 
tion or attempt to enforce them, but simply because the 
laws themselves as interpreted by the courts do not reach 
the difficulty. If the insufficiencies of existing laws can be 
remedied by further legislation, it should be done. The 
fact must be recognized however that all Federal legislation 
on this subject may fall short of its purpose because of in- 



herent obstacles and also because of the complex character 
of our governmental system, which, while making Federal 
authority supreme within its sphere, has carefully limited 
that sphere by metes and bounds that cannot be trans- 
gressed." 

At every election, the regulation of trusts had been 
the foot-ball of campaign oratory and the subject of 
many insincere declarations. 

Our Republican administration has taken up the 
subject in a practical, sensible way as a business 
rather than a political question, saying what it really 
meant, and doing what lay at its hand to be done to 
accomplish effective regulation. The principles upon 
which the government proceeded were stated by the 
President in his message of December, 1902. He 
said : 

" A fundamental base of civilization is the inviolability of 
property ; but this is in no wise inconsistent with the right of 
society to regulate the exercise of the artificial powers which 
it confers upon the owners of property, under the name of 
corporate franchises, in such a way as to prevent the misuse 
of these powers. * * * 

" We can do nothing of good in the way of regulating and 
supervising these corporations until we fix clearly in our 
minds that we are not attacking the corporations, but en- 
deavoring to do away with any evil in them. We are not 
hostile to them ; we are merely determined that they shall be 
so handled as to subserve the public good. We draw the 
line against misconduct, not against wealth. * * * 

" In curbing and regulating the combinations of capital 
which are or may become injurious to the public we must be 
careful not to stop the great enterprises which have legiti- 
mately reduced the cost of production, not to abandon the 
place which our country has won in the leadership of the 
international industrial world, not to strike down wealth 
with the result of closing factories and mines, of turning the 
wage-worker idle in the streets and leaving the farmer with- 
out a market for what he grows. * * * 

" I believe that monopolies, unjust discriminations, 



10 

which prevent or cripple competition, fraudulent over-capi- 
talization, and other evils in trust organizations and prac- 
tices which injuriously affect interstate trade, can be pre- 
vented under the power of the Congress to ' regulate com- 
merce with foreign nations and among the several States ' 
through regulations and requirements operating directly 
upon such commerce, the instrumentalities thereof, and those 
engaged therein." 

After long consideration, Congress passed three 
practical statutes : on the 11th of February, 1903, an 
act to expedite hearings in suits in enforcement of 
the Anti-Trust Act ; on the 14th of February, 1903, 
the act creating a new Department of Commerce and 
Labor with a Bureau of Corporations, having authority 
to secure systematic information regarding the organ- 
ization and operation of corporations engaged in inter- 
state commerce ; and on the 19th of February, 1903, 
an act enlarging the powers of the Interstate Com- 
merce Commission and of the courts, to deal with 
secret rebates in transportation charges, which are 
the chief means by which the trusts crush out their 
smaller competitors. 

The Attorney General has gone on in the same prac- 
tical way, not to talk about the trusts, but to proceed 
against the trusts by law for their regulation. In 
separate suits fourteen of the great railroads of the 
Couutry have been restrained by injunction from giving 
illegal rebates to the favored shippers, who by means 
of them were driving out the smaller shippers and 
monopolizing the grain and meat business of the 
Country. The beef trust was put under injunction. 
The officers of the railroads engaged in the cotton 
carrying pool, affecting all that great industry 
of the South, were indicted and have aban- 
doned their combination. The Northern Securities 
Company which undertook by combining in one own- 



11 

ership the capital stocks of the Northern Pacific and 
Great Northern Eailroads to end traffic competition in 
the Northwest, has been destroyed by a vigorous pros- 
ecution expedited and brought to a speedy and effect- 
ive conclusion in the Supreme Court uuder the act of 
February 11th, 1903. The Attorney General says : 

" Here, then, are four phases of the attack on the com- 
binations in restraint of trade and commerce — the railroad 
injunction suits, the cotton pool cases, the beef trust cases, 
and the Northern Securities case. The first relates to the 
moropoly produced by secret and preferential rates for rail- 
road transportation ; the second to railroad traffic pooling ; 
the third to a combination of independent corporations to fix 
and maintain extortionate prices for meats ; and the fourth 
to a corporation organized to merge into itself the control of 
parallel and competing lines of railroad and to eliminate 
competition in their rates of transportation." 

The right of the Interstate Commerce Commission 
to compel the production of books and papers has been 
established by the judgment of the Supreme Court in a 
suit against the coal carrying roads. Other suits have 
been brought and other indictments have been found 
and other trusts have been driven back within legal 
bounds. No investment in lawful business has been 
jeopardized, no fair and honest enterprise has been 
injured ; but it is certain that wherever the constitu- 
tional power of the national government reaches, trusts 
are being practically regulated and curbed within law- 
ful bounds as they never have been before, and the 
men of small capital are finding in the efficiency and 
skill of the national Department of Justice a protection 
they never had before against the crushing effect of 
unlawful combinations. 

We have at last reached a point where the public 
wealth of farm land which has seemed so inexhaustible 



12 

is nearly gone, and the problem of utilizing the re- 
mainder for the building of new homes has become of 
vital importance. 

The present administration has dealt with this 
problem vigorously and effectively, Great areas bad 
been unlawfully fenced in by men of large means, and 
the home-builder had been excluded. Many of these 
unlawful aggressors have been compelled to relinquish 
their booty, and more than 2,000,000 acres of land 
have been restored to the public. Extensive frauds in 
procuring grants of land, not for homesteads but for 
speculation, have been investigated and stopped, and 
the perpetrators have been indicted and are being 
actively prosecuted. A competent commission has 
been constituted to examine into the defective work- 
ing of the existing laws and to suggest practical legis- 
lation to prevent further abuse. That commission 
has reported, and bills adequate to accomplish the 
purpose have been framed and are before Congress. 
The further denundation of forest areas, producing 
alternate floods and dryness in our river valleys, has 
been checked by the extension of forest reserves, 
which have been brought to aggregate more than 63,- 
000,000 acres of land. The reclamation by irrigation 
of the vast arid regions forming the chief part of our 
remaining public domain, has been provided for by the 
National Reclamation Law of June 17th, 1903. The 
execution of this law, without taxation and by the ap- 
plication of the proceeds of public land sales alone, 
through the construction of storage reservoirs for 
water, will make many millions of acres of fertile lands 
available for settlement. Over $20,000,000 from these 
sources have been already received to the credit of 
the reclamation fund. Over 33,000,000 acres of public 
lands in fourteen States and Territories have been 



13 

embraced in the sixty-seven projects which have been 
devised and are under examination, and on eight of 
these the work of actual construction has begun. 

The Postal service has been extended and improved. 
Its revenues have increased from $76,000,000 in 1895 
to $95,000,000 in 1899, and $144,000,000 in 1904. In 
dealing with these vast sums, a few cases of peculation, 
trifling in amount and by subordinate officers, have 
occurred there as they occur in every business. 
Neither fear nor favor, nor political or personal in- 
fluence has availed to protect the wrongdoers. Their 
acts have been detected, investigated, laid bare ; they 
have been dismissed from their places, prosecuted 
criminally, indicted, many of them tried, and many of 
them convicted. The abuses in the carriage of second- 
class mail matter have been remedied. The Rural 
Free Delivery has been widely extended. It is wholly 
the creation of Republican administration. The last 
Democratic Postmaster General declared it impracti- 
cable. The first administration of McKinley proved 
the contrary. At the begining of the fiscal year 1899 
there were about 200 routes in operation. There are 
now more than 25,000 routes, bringing a daily mail 
service to more than 12,000,000 of our people in rural 
communities, enlarging the circulation of the news- 
paper and the magazine, increasing communication, 
and relieving the isolation of life on the farm. 

The Department of Agriculture has been brought to 
a point of efficiency and practical benefit never before 
known. The Oleomargarine Act of May 9th, 1902, now 
sustained in the Supreme Court, and the Act of July 
1st, 1902, to prevent the false branding of food and 
dairy products, — protect farmers against fraudulent im- 
itations. The Act of February 2nd, 1903, enables the 



14 

Secretary of Agriculture to prevent the spread of con- 
tagious and infections diseases of live stock. Rigid 
inspection has protected our cattle against infection 
from abroad, and has established the highest credit for 
our meat products in the markets of the world. The 
earth has been searched for weapons with which to 
fight the enemies that destroy the growing crops. An 
insect brought from near the Great Wall of China has 
checked the San Jose scale which was destroying our 
orchards ; a parasitic fly brought from South Africa is 
exterminating the black scale in the lemon and orange 
groves of California; and an ant from Guatamala is 
about offering battle to the boll weevil. Broad science 
has been brought to the aid of limited experience. 
Study of the relations between plant life and climate 
and soil has been followed, by the introduction of special 
crops suited to our varied conditions. The introduction 
of just the right kind of seed has enabled the Gulf States 
to increase our rice crop from 115,000,000 pounds in 
1898 to 400,000,000 pounds in 1903, and to supply the 
entire American demand, with a surplus for export. 
The right kind of sugar beet has increased our annual 
production of beet sugar by over 200,000 tons. Seed 
brought from countries of little rain fall is producing 
millions of bushels of grain on lands which a few 
years ago were deemed a hopeless part of the arid 
belt. 

The systematic collection and publication of infor- 
mation regarding the magnitude and conditions of our 
crops, is mitigating the injury done by speculation to 
the farmer's market. 

To increase the profit of the farmer's toil, to protect 
the farmei's product and extend his market, and to im- 
prove the conditions of the farmer's life ; to advance 
the time when America shall raise within her own 



15 

limits every product of the soil consumed by her 
people, as she makes within her own limits every nec- 
essary product of manufacture, — these have been car- 
dinal objects of Republican administration ; and we 
show a record of practical things done toward the ac- 
complishment of these objects never before approached. 

Four years ago we held the Island of Cuba by 
military occupation. The opposition charged, and the 
people of Cuba believed, that we did not intend to 
keep the pledge of April 20th, 1898, that when the 
pacification of Cuba was accomplished we should leave 
the government and control of the Island to its people. 
The new policy towards Cuba which should follow the 
fulfillment of that pledge was unformed. During the 
four years it has been worked out in detail and has 
received effect. It was communicated by executive 
order to the Military Governor. It was embodied in 
the Act of Congress known as the Piatt Amendment. 
It was accepted by the Cuban Constitutional Conven- 
tion on the 12th of October, 1901. It secured to Cuba 
her liberty and her independence, but it required her 
to maintain them. It forbade her ever to use the 
freedom we had earned for her by so great a sacrifice 
of blood and treasure, to give the Island to any other 
power ; it required her to maintain a government ade- 
quate for the protection of life and property and 
liberty, and should she fail, it gave us the right to 
intervene for the maintenance of such a government. 
And it gave us the right to naval stations upon her 
coast for the protection and defense alike of Cuba and 
the United States. 

On the 20th of May, 1902, under a constitution 
which embodied these stipulations, the government 
and control of Cuba were surrendered to the President 



16 

and Congress elected by her people, and the American 
army sailed away. The new Republic began its exist- 
ence with an administration of Cubans completely or- 
ganized in all its branches and trained to effective 
service by American officers. The administration of 
President Palm a has been wise end efficient. Peace 
and order have prevailed. The people of Cuba are 
prosperous and happy. Her finances have been hon- 
estly administered, and her credit is high. The naval 
stations have been located and bounded at Guanta- 
namo and Bahia Honda, and are in the possession of 
our Navy. The Piatt Amendment is the sheet anchor 
of Cuban independence and of Cuban credit. No such 
revolutions as have afflicted Central and South Amer- 
ica are possible there, because it is known to all men 
that an attempt to overturn the foundations of that 
government will be confronted by the overwhelming 
power of the United States. The treaty of reciprocity 
and the Act of Congress of December 6th, 1903, which 
confirmed it, completed the expression of our policy 
towards Cuba ; which with a far view to the fu- 
ture aims to bind to us by ties of benefit and 
protection, of mutual interest and genuine friend- 
ship, that Island which guards the Caribbean 
and the highway to the Isthmus, and must al- 
ways be, if hostile, an outpost of attack, and, 
if friendly, an outpost of defense for the United States. 
Rich as we are, the American people have no more 
valuable possession than the sentiment expressed in 
the dispatch which I will now read : 



17 

" Havana, May 20, 1902 
Theodore Roosevelt. 

President, Washington. 

The government of the Island having been just trans- 
ferred, I, as Chief Magistrate of the Republic, faithfully in- 
terpreting the sentiment of the whole people of Cuba, have 
the honor to send you and the American people testimony of 
our profound gratitude and the assurance of an enduring 
friendship, with wishes and prayers to the Almighty for the 
welfare and prosperity of the United States. 

T. ESTEADA PALMA." 

When the last National Convention met the Philip- 
pines also were under military rule. The insurrectos 
from the mountains spread terror among the peaceful 
people by midnight foray and secret assassination. 
Aguinaldo bided his time in a secret retreat. Over 
seventy thousand American soldiers from more than 
five hundred stations, held a still vigorous enemy in 
check. The Philippine Commission had not yet begun 
its work. 

The last vestige of insurrection has been swept 
away. With their work accomplished, over 55,000 
American troops have been brought back across the 
Pacific. Civil government has been established through- 
out the Archipelago. Peace and order and justice 
prevail. The Philippine Commission, guided at first 
by executive order and then by the wise legislation of 
Congress in the Philippine Government Act of July 1, 
1902, have established and conducted a government 
which has been a credit to their country and a bless- 
ing to the people of the Islands. The body of laws 
which they have enacted upon careful and intelligent 
study of the needs of the country challenges compari- 
son with the statutes of any country. The personnel 
of civil government has been brought together under 
an advanced and comprehensive civil service law, 



18 

which has been rigidly enforced. A complete census 
has been taken, designed to be there as it was in 
Cuba the basis for representative government ; and the 
people of the Islands will soon proceed under pro- 
visions already mkde by Congress to the election of a 
representative assembly, in which for the first time in 
their history they may have a voice in the making of 
their own laws. In the meantime the local and pro- 
vincial governments are in the hands of officers elected 
by the Filipinos ; and in the great central offices, in 
the Commission, on the Bench, in the executive de- 
partments, the most distinguished men of the Filipino 
race are taking their part in the government of 
their people. A free school system has been estab- 
lished and hundreds of thousands of children are learn- 
ing lessons which will help fit them for self-govern- 
ment. The seeds of religious strife existing in the 
bitter controversy between the people and the re- 
ligious orders have been deprived of potency for harm 
by the purchase of the Friars' lands, and their prac- 
tical withdrawal. By the Act of Congress of March 
2nd, 1903, a gold standard has been established to 
take the place of the fluctuating silver currency. The 
unit of value is made exactly one-half the value of the 
American gold dollar, so that American money is 
practically part of their currency system. To enable 
the Philippine Government to issue this new cur- 
rency, $6,000,000 was borrowed by them in 1903 in the 
City of New York ; and it was borrowed at a net in- 
terest charge of 1 5-8 per cent per annum. The trade 
of the Islands has increased notwithstanding adverse 
conditions. During the last five years of peace under 
Spanish rule, the average total trade of the Islands was 
less than $36,000,000. During the fiscal year ending 
June 30th, 1903, the trade of the Islands was over $6G r 



19 

000,000. There is but one point of disturbance, and 
that is in the country of the Mohammedan Moros, 
where there is an occasional fitful savage outbreak 
against the enforcement of the law recently made to 
provide for adequate supervision and control to put 
an end to the practice of human slavery. 

When Governor Taft sailed from Manila in Decem- 
ber last to till the higher office where he will still 
guard the destinies of the people for whom he has 
done such great and noble service, he was followed to 
the shore by a mighty throng, not of repressed and 
sullen subjects, but of free and peaceful people, whose 
tears and prayers of affectionate farewell showed that 
they had already begun to learn that " our flag has not 
lost its gift of benediction in its world-wide journey to 
their shores." 

None can foretell the future ; but there seems no 
reasonable cause to doubt, that under the policy 
already effectively inaugurated, the institutions already 
implanted, and the processes already begun, in the 
Philippine Islands, if these be not repressed and inter- 
rupted, the Philippine people will follow in the foot- 
steps of the people of Cuba ; that more slowly indeed, 
because they are not as advanced, yet as surely, they 
will grow in capacity for self-government, and receiv- 
ing power as they grow in capacity, will come to bear 
substantially such relations to the people of the 
United States as do now the people of Cuba, differing 
in details as conditions and needs differ, but the same 
in principle and the same in beneficent results. 

In 1900 the project of an Isthmian Canal stood 
where it was left by the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty of 
1850. For half a century it had halted, with Great 
Britain resting upon a joint right of control, and the 



20 

great undertaking of de Lesseps struggling against the 
doom of failure imposed by extravagance and corrup- 
tion. On the 18th of November, 1901, the Hay- 
Pauncefote Treaty with Great Britain relieved the 
enterprise of the right of British control and left that 
right exclusively in the United States. Then followed 
swiftly the negotiations and protocols with Nicaragua ; 
the Isthmian Canal Act of June 28th, 1902 ; the just 
agreement with the French Canal Company to pay 
them the value of the work they had done ; the nego- 
tiation and ratification of the treaty with Columbia ; 
the rejection of that treaty by Columbia in violation 
of our rights and the world's right to the passage of 
the Isthmus ; the seizure by Panama of the oppor- 
tunity, to renew her oft-repeated effort to throw off the 
hateful and oppressive yoke of Columbia and resume 
the independence, which once had been hers, and of 
which she had been deprived by fraud and force ; the 
success of the revolution ; our recognition of the 
new Republic followed by recognition from sub- 
stantially all the civilized powers of the world ; the 
treaty with Panama recognizing and confirming our 
right to construct the canal ; the ratification of the 
treaty by the Senate ; confirmatory legislation by Con- 
gress ; the payment of the $50,000,000 to the French 
Company and to Panama ; the appointment of the 
Canal Commission in accordance with law ; and its 
organization to begin the work. 

The action of the United States at every step has 
been in accordance with the law of Nations, consistent 
with the principles of justice and honor, in discharge 
of the trust to build the canal we long since 
assumed, by denying the right of every other power to 
build it, dictated by a high and unselfish purpose, for 
the common benefit of all mankind. That action was 



21 

wise, considerate, prompt, vigorous and effective ; and 
now the greatest of constructive nations stands ready 
and competent to begin and to accomplish the great 
enterprise which shall realize the dreams of past ages, 
bind together our Atlantic and Pacific Coasts, and 
open a new highway for that commerce of the Orient 
whose course has controlled the rise and fall of civili- 
zations. Success in that enterprise greatly concerns 
the credit and honor of the American people, and it is 
for them to say whether the building of the canal shall 
be in charge of the men who made its building possi- 
ble, or of the weaklings whose incredulous objections 
would have postponed it for another generation. 

Throughout the world the diplomacy of the present 
administration has made for peace and justice 
among Nations. Clear-sighted to perceive and prompt 
to maintain American interests, it has been sagacious 
and simple and direct in its methods, and considerate 
of the rights and of the feelings of others. 

Within the month after the last National Conven- 
tion met, Secretary Hay's circular Note of July 3rd, 
1900 to tbe Great Powers of Europe had declared the 
policy of the United States 

" to seek a solution which may bring about permanent safety 
and peace to China, preserve China's territorial and adminis- 
trative entity, protect all rights guaranteed to friendly pow- 
ers by treaty and international law, and safeguard for the 
world the principle of equal and impartial trade with all parts 
of the Chinese Empire." 

The express adherence of the Powers of Europe to 
this declaration was secured. The open recognition of 
the rule of right ccnduct imposed its limitations upon 
the conduct of the Powers in the Orient. It was made 
the test of defensible action. Carefully guarded by the 



22 

wise statesman who Lad secured its acceptance, it 
brought a moral force of recognized value to protect 
peaceful and helpless China from dismemberment and 
spoliation, and to preserve the Open Door in the Ori- 
ent for the commerce of the world. Under the in- 
fluence of this effective friendship, a new commercial 
treaty with China, proclaimed on the 8th of 
October last, has enlarged our opportunities for trade, 
opened new ports to our commerce, and abolished in- 
ternal duties on goods in transit within the Empire. 
There were indeed other Nations which agreed with 
this policy of American diplomacy, but no other 
Nation was free from suspicion of selfish aims. None 
other had won confidence in the sincerity of its pur- 
pose, and none other but America could render the 
service which we have rendered to humanity in China 
during the past four years. High evidence of that 
enviable position of our Country, is furnished by the 
fact that when all Europe was in apprehension lest the 
field of war between Russia and Japan should so 
spread as to involve China's ruin and a universal con- 
flict, it was to the American Government that the able 
and far-sighted German Emperor appealed, to take 
the lead again in bringing about an agreement for the 
limitation of the field of action, and the preservation 
of the administrative entity of China outside of Man- 
churia ; and that was accomplished. 

Upon our own continent a dispute with Canada over 
the boundary of Alaska had been growing more acute 
for 30 years. A multitude of miners swift to defend 
their own rights by force were locating mining claims 
under the laws of both Countries in the disputed ter- 
ritory. At any moment a fatal affray between Cana- 
dian and American miners was liable to begin a conflict 
in which all British Columbia would be arrayed on one 



23 

side and all our Northwest upon the other. Agreement 
was impossible. But the Alaskan Boundary Treaty of 
January 24th, 1903, provided a tribunal for the de- 
cision of the controversy ; and upon legal proofs 
and reasoned argument, au appeal has been had from 
prejudice and passion to judicial judgment ; and under 
the lead of a great Chief Justice of England, who held 
the sacred obligations of his judicial office above all 
other considerations, the dispute has been settled for- 
ever and substantially in accordance with the Amer- 
ican contention. 

In 1900 the first Administration of McKinley had 
played a great part in establishing The Hague 
Tribunal for International Arbitration. The prevailing 
opinion of Europe was incredulous as to the practical 
utility of the provision, and anticipated a paper trib- 
unal unsought by litigants. It was the example of the 
United States which set at naught this opinion. The 
first international case taken to The Hague Tribunal 
was under our protocol with Mexico of May 22nd, 1902, 
submitting our contention for the rights of the Koman 
Catholic Church in California to a share of the Church 
moneys held by the Mexican Government before the 
cession, and known as the Pious Fund ; and the first 
decision of the Tribunal was an award in our favor 
upon that question. 

When in 1903 the failure of Venezuela to pay her 
just debts led England, Germany and Italy to war- 
like measures for the collection of their claims, an 
appeal by Venezuela to our government resulted in 
agreements upon arbitration in place of the war, and 
in a request that our President should act as arbi- 
trator. Again he promoted the authority and prestige 
of The Hague Tribunal, and was able to lead all the 
powers to submit the crucial questions in controversy 



24 

to the determination of that court. It is due greatly 
to support by the American Government that this 
agency for peace has disappointed the expectations of 
its detractors, and by demonstrations of practical use- 
fulness has begun a career fraught with possibilities of 
incalcuable benefit to mankind. 

On the 11 th of April, 1903, was proclaimed another 
convention between all the Great Powers agreeing 
upon more humane rules for the conduct of war ; and 
these in substance incorporated and gave the sanction 
of the civilized world to the rules drafted by Francis 
Lieber and approved by Abraham Lincoln for the 
conduct of the armies of the United States in the 
field. 

All Americans who desire safe and conservative ad- 
ministration which shall avoid cause of quarrel, all 
who abhor war, all who long for the perfect sway of the 
principles of that religion which we all profess, should 
rejoice that under this Republican administration their 
Country has attained a potent leadership among the 
Nations in the cause of peace and international jus- 
tice. 

The respect and moral power thus gained have been 
exercised in the interests of humanity, where the rules 
of diplomatic intercourse have made formal interven- 
tion impossible. When the Roumanian outrages and 
when the appalling massacre at Kishineff, shocked civil- 
ization, and filled thousands of our own people with 
mourning, the protest of America was heard through 
the voice of its government, with full observance of 
diplomatic rules, but with moral power and effect. 

We have advanced the authority of the Monroe Doc- 
trine. Our adherence to the convention which estab- 
lished The Hague Tribunal was accepted by the other 
powers, with a formal declaration that nothing therein 



25 

contained should be construed to imply the relin- 
quishment by the United States of its traditional 
attitude toward purely American questions. The 
armed demonstration by the European powers against 
Venezuela was made the occasion for disclaimers to 
the United States of any intention to seize the terri- 
tory of Venezuela, recognizing in the most unmistak- 
able way the rights of the United States expressed in 
the declaration of that traditional policy. 

In the meantime, mindful that moral powers un- 
supported by physical strength do not always avail 
against selfishness and aggression, we have been aug- 
menting the forces which command respect. 

AVe have brought our Navy to a high state of effi- 
ciency and have exercised both Army and Navy in the 
methods of seacoast defense. The joint Army and 
Navy Board has been bringing the two services to- 
gether in good understanding and the common study 
of the strategy, the preparation and the cooperation 
which will make them effective in time of need. Our 
ships have been exercised in fleet and squadron move- 
ments, have been improved in marksmanship and 
mobility, and have been constantly tested by use. 
Since the last National Convention met we have com- 
pleted and added to our Navy, 5 battleships, 4 cruisers, 
4 monitors, 34 topedo destroyers and torpedo boats ; 
while we have put under construction, 13 battleships 
and 13 cruisers. 

Four years ago our Army numbered over 100,01)0 
men — regulars and volunteers, 75 per cent of them in 
the Philippines and China. Under the operation of 
statutes limiting the period of service, it was about to 
lapse back into its old and insufficient number of 
27,000, and its old and insufficient organization under 



26 

the practical control of permanent staff depart- 
ments at Washington, with the same divisions 
of counsel and lack of coordinating and directing 
power at the head, that led to confusion and scandal in 
the war with Spain. During the past four years the 
lessons taught by that war have received practical 
effect. The teachings of Sherman and of Upton have 
been recalled and respected. Congress has fixed a 
maximum of the Army at $100,000, and a minimum at 
60,000, so that maintaining only the minimum in peace, 
as we now do, when war threatens the President may 
begin preparation by filling the ranks to the maximum, 
without waiting until after war has begun, as he had to 
wait in 1898. Permanent staff appointments have been 
changed to details from the line, with compulsory 
returns at fixed intervals to service with troops, so that 
the requirements of the field and the camp rather than 
the requirements of the office desk shall control the 
departments of administration and supply. A corps 
organization has been provided for our artillery, with 
a chief of artillery at the head, so that there may be 
intelligent use of our costly seacoast defenses. Under 
the Act of February 14th, 1903, a General Staff has 
been established, organized to suit American conditions 
and requirements and adequate for the performance of 
the long-neglected but all-important duties of directing 
military education and training, and applying the most 
advanced principles of military science to that neces- 
sary preparation for war which is the surest safeguard 
of peace. The command of the Army now rests where 
it is placed by the Constitution — in the President. 
His power is exercised through a military chief of staff 
pledged by the conditions and tenure of his office to 
confidence and loyalty to his commander. Thus civil- 
ian control of the military arm, upon which we must 



27 

always insist, is reconciled with that military efficiency 
which can be obtained only under the direction of the 
trained military expert. 

Four years ago we were living under an obsolete 
Militia law more than a century old, which Washington 
and Jefferson and Madison, and almost every president 
since their time, had declared to be worthless. We 
presented the curious spectacle of a people depending 
upon a citizen soldiery for protection against aggression, 
and making practically no provision whatever for 
training its citizens in the use of warlike weapons 
or in the elementary duties of the soldier. 
The mandate of the Constitution which re- 
quired Congress to provide for organizing, 
arming and disciplining the Militia had been 
left unexecuted. In default of national provisions, 
bodies of state troops, created for local purposes and 
supported at local expense, had grown up throughout 
the Union. Their feelings towards the regular army 
were rather of distrust and dislike than of comradeship. 
Their arms, equipment, discipline, organization, and 
methods of obtaining and accounting for supplies were 
varied and inconsistent. They were unsuited to be- 
come a part of any homogenuous force, and their rela- 
tions to the Army of the United States were undefined 
and conjectural. By the Militia Act of January 20th, 
1903, Congress performed its duty under the Constitu- 
tion. Leaving these bodies still to perform their duties 
to the States, it made them the organized militia of the 
United States. It provided for their conformity in 
armament, organization and discipline to the Army of 
the United States ; it provided the ways in which, 
either strictly as militia or as volunteers, they should 
become an active part of the Army when called upon ; 
it provided for their training, instruction and exercise 



28 

conjointly with the Regular Army ; it imposed 
upon the Regular Army the duty of promot- 
ing their efficiency in many ways. In recog- 
nition of the service to the Nation which 
these citizen soldiers would be competent 
to render, the Nation assumed its share of the burden 
of their armament, their supply and their training. 
The workings of this system have already demonstrated, 
not only that we can have citizens outside of the 
Regular Army trained for duty in war, but that we can 
have a body of volunteer officers ready for service, be- 
tween whom and the officers of the Regular Army have 
been created by intimate association and mutual help- 
fulness, those relations of confidence and esteem with- 
out which no army can be effective. 

The first administration of McKinley fought and 
won the war with Spain, put dowu the insurrection in 
the Philippines, annexed Hawaii, rescued the legations 
in Pekin, brought Porto Rico into our commercial 
system, enacted a protective tariff, and established our 
national currency on the firm foundations of the gold 
standard by the Financial legislation of the 56th Con- 
gress. 

The present administration has reduced taxation, re- 
duced the public debt, reduced the annual interest 
charge, made effective progress in the regulation of 
trusts, fostered business, promoted agriculture, built 
up the navy, reorganized the army, resurrected the 
militia system, inaugurated a new policy for the 
preservation and reclamation of public lands, given 
civil government to the Philippines, established the 
Republic of Cuba, bound it to us by ties of gratitude, 
of commercial interest and of common defense, swung 
open the closed gateway of the Isthmus, strengthened 
the Monroe doctrine, ended the Alaskan Boundary 



29 

dispute, protected the integrity of China, opened wider 
its doors of trade, advanced the principle of arbitra- 
tion, and promoted peace among the Nations. 

"We challenge judgment upon this record of effective 
performance in legislation, in execution and in admin- 
istration. 

The work is not fully done ; policies are not com- 
pletely wrought out ; domestic questions still press 
continually for solution ; other trusts must be regu- 
lated ; the tariff may presently receive revision, and if 
so, should receive it at the hands of the friends and not 
the enemies of the protective system ; the new Philip- 
pine government has only begun to develop its plans 
for the benefit of that long- neglected country ; our 
flag floats on the Isthmus, but the canal is yet to be 
built ; peace does not yet reign on earth, and con- 
siderate firmness backed by strength is still needful in 
diplomacy. 

The American people have now to say, whether poli- 
cies shall be reversed, or committed to unfriendly 
guardians ; whether performance, which now proves 
itself for the benefit and honor of our country, shall be 
transferred to unknown and perchance to feeble 
hands. 

Xo dividing line can be drawn athwart the course 
of this successful administration. The fatal 14th of 
September, 1901, marked no change of policy, no 
lower level of achievement. The bullet of the assassin 
robbed us of the friend we loved ; it took away from 
the people the President of their choice ; it deprived 
civilization of a potent force making always for right- 
eousness and for humanity. But the fabric of free 
institutions remained unshaken. The government of 
the people went on. The great Party that William 
McKinley led, wrought still in the spirit of his ex- 
ample. His true and loyal successor has been equal 



30 

to the burden cast upon him. Widely different in tem- 
perament and methods, he has approved himself of the 
same elemental virtues — the same fundamental beliefs. 
With faithful and revering memory, he has executed 
the purposes and continued unbroken the policy of 
President McKinley for the peace, prosperity and 
honor of our beloved Country. And he has met all 
new occasions with strength and resolution and far- 
sighted wisdom. 

As we gather in this convention, our hearts go back 
to the friend — the never to be forgotten friend, whom 
when last we met we acclaimed with one accord as our 
universal choice to bear a second time the highest 
honor in the Nation's gift ; and back still, memory 
goes through many a year of leadership and loyalty. 

How wise and how skillful he was ! how modest and 
self-effacing! how deep his insight into the human 
heart ! how swift the intuitions of his sympathy ! how 
compelling the charm of his gracious presence ! He 
was so unselfish, so thoughtful of the happiness of 
others, so genuine a lover of his country and his kind. 
And he was the kindest and tenderest friend who ever 
grasped another's hand. Alas, that his virtues did 
plead in vain against cruel fate ! 

Yet we may rejoice, that while he lived he was 
crowned with honor ; that the rancor of party strife 
had ceased ; that success in his great tasks, the restora- 
tion of peace, the approval of his countrymen, the 
affection of his friends, — gave the last quiet months in 
his home at Canton repose and contentment. 

And with McKinley we remember Hanna with affec- 
tion and sorrow — his great lieutenant. They are 
together again. 

But we turn as they would have us turn, to the duties 
of the hour, the hopes of the future ; we turn as they 



31 

would have us turn, to prepare ourselves for struggle 
under the the same standard borne in other hands by 
right of true inheritence. Honor, truth, courage, purity 
of life, domestic virtue, love of country, loyalty to high 
ideals — all these combined with active intelligence, 
with learning, with experience in affairs, with the con- 
clusive proof of competency afforded by wise and con- 
servative administration, by great things already done 
and great results already achieved, — all these we bring 
to the people with another candidate. Shall not these 
have honor in our land ? Truth, sincerity, courage ! 
these underlie the fabric of our institutions. Upon 
hypocrisy and sham, upon cunning and false pretense, 
upon weakness and cowardice, upon the arts of the 
demagogue and the devices of the mere politician, — 
no government can stand. No system of popular 
government can endure in which the people do not be- 
lieve and trust. Our President has taken the whole 
people into his confidence. Incapable of deception, he 
has put aside concealment. Frankly and without re- 
serve, he has told them what their government was 
doing, and the reasons. It is no campaign of ap- 
pearances upon which we enter, for the people know 
the good and the bad, the success and failure, to be 
credited and charged to our account. It is no cam- 
paign of sounding words and specious pretences, for 
our President has told the people with frankness what 
he believed and what he intended. He has meant 
every word he said, and the people have believed 
every word he said, and with him this convention 
agrees because every word has been sound Republican 
doctrine. No people can maintain free government 
who do not in their hearts value the qualities which 
have made the present President of the United States 
conspicuous among the men of his time as a type of 



32 

noble manhood. Come what may here — come what 
may in November, God grant that those qualities of 
brave true manhood shall have honor throughout 
America, shall be held for an example in every home, 
and that the youth of generations to come may grow 
up to feel that it is better than wealth, or office, or 
power, to have the honesty, the purity, and the 
courage of Theodore Roosevelt. 



[25585] 



